The rumours about Windows possibly being ported to ARM has left a lot of people bewildered; why would you port Windows NT when Windows CE 6.0 is a perfectly capable operating system? Putting all the pieces together, it's actually quite clear why you would want Windows NT on ARM: servers.

Older the project in the FOSS world the more portable it becomes. Its a nature of the FOSS world as the backgrounds of the coders become more diverse so does the project supported platforms.

Yes a lot of FOSS projects started out platform locked one way or another.

Now closed source normally goes the other way. Portable and becomes less portable. NT use to support stack loads of different platforms but 2008 and Windows 7 support a small number due to cost cutting.

Look, NT _IS_ more portable, because it _already runs_ on multiple architectures.
Hell NT runs on chips not even made any more.

Will ReactOS _become_ more portable? Possibly. We can't see NT's code, or try to compile it on some obscure architecture, so if it becomes as portable as NT has been shown to be, we can assume a tie.

FOSS doesn't necessarily become more portable over time.
That's a fallacy.

It's _often_ true, perhaps even _usually_, but _pleaaaaase_ don't make blanket statements in favour of FOSS that _aren't true_. It just becomes fodder for trolls.
ZSNES has been around for 10 years, and only runs on IA32.
Why? Because it's written in asm.
BareMetal OS isn't going to become portable because it's not a priority, it's not even close.

"Often" "Usually" but not "".
Qualify the statement and I'll say it's true.

Look, NT _IS_ more portable, because it _already runs_ on multiple architectures.
Hell NT runs on chips not even made any more.

Will ReactOS _become_ more portable? Possibly. We can't see NT's code, or try to compile it on some obscure architecture, so if it becomes as portable as NT has been shown to be, we can assume a tie.

My simple point here we don't know. Prototypes of Reactos exist for all arch NT use to support plus a few extras. Yes Reactos has be prototypes exist for those chips that are not made any more.

Reactos may be more portable than NT now. Just no one has really checked fully. I also understand why most people would not be interested to find out.

FOSS doesn't necessarily become more portable over time.
That's a fallacy.

It's _often_ true, perhaps even _usually_, but _pleaaaaase_ don't make blanket statements in favour of FOSS that _aren't true_. It just becomes fodder for trolls.
ZSNES has been around for 10 years, and only runs on IA32.
Why? Because it's written in asm.
BareMetal OS isn't going to become portable because it's not a priority, it's not even close.

"Often" "Usually" but not "".
Qualify the statement and I'll say it's true.

Older the project in the FOSS world the more portable it becomes. Its a nature of the FOSS world as the backgrounds of the coders become more diverse so does the project supported platforms.

You really did not read this. I did not say portable only in the sense of processor chips alone. Also I did not say the speed the projects become more portable. I should have been more clear in this. The speed of FOSS projects become more portable is unique to each project. But it is happening.

Even ZSNES does obey the FOSS world of becoming more portable with age as community around it has got more diverse. Being written in pure asm x86 for dos has yes slowed its progress. These days it has ports on Windows and Linux as well. Also it now has a splattering of C code appearing in parts of the engine.

Of course the speed of somethings becoming portable across cpu types may take 40 to 50 years to never with the community around and the complexity involved. Even with that limitation portability between OS's and other things will still increase.

No matter how much you say no it will not happen FOSS it does happen over time and always will as long as the project has a growing community with growing interests.

Basically a FOSS project getting more portable with time is a sign of health about the open source project. Reasons why FOSS project will not get more portable with age all point to unhealthy things that either lead to a project forked or project fading away.

BareMetal OS is too young to know where it will and up and its Community is still very compact. You have to remember when Linux was young it was only intended for x86 processes. Coders around it grew and that ended as they become more diverse. Also BareMetal OS is not 1 kernel its two. 1 written in asm and 1 written in C. Of course the C one would be simpler to port. Yes even BareMetal possibility of portability has increased from when it started as a asm only kernel.

Look, NT _IS_ more portable, because it _already runs_ on multiple architectures.
Hell NT runs on chips not even made any more.

This isn't usenet or IRC. You can bold and italic the text.

On the topic:
Wasn't the latest NT kernel a substantial rewrite? I think it was...
NT once ran on systems that are no more, so it's no longer true. And having over 5 years of development concentrated on x86 brings in a lot of non-portable code.

We can argue as much as we like, but the fact is that we just don't know. Unless you happen to work for MS in that division.

It's not a cost-cutting issue, those platforms just did not sell at all or had really bad marketing.

Compaq killed the Alpha right before Windows 2000, despite the fact that it was the most powerful platform at the time to run Exchange or SQL Server on. I saw 64-bit Windows 2000 running 64-bit SQL Server 2000 at PC Expo in 1999 at the Javits Center. It smoked everything x86 at the time. However, Compaq must have learned their marketing lessons from Commodore because it was never publicly released, and soon after, the Alpha line was killed off. There was genuine demand for their products, but they managed to screw it up.

The MIPS and PowerPC platforms also did not sell at all. They didn't sell much with anything other than UNIX or Mac OS on them. They both got killed after Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3. There was no way Steve Jobs was going to allow Windows to run on a Mac right after the clones (now is a different story!), which took away 90%+ of the PPC machines out there, and since this was soon after Microsoft gave the finger to IBM with OS/2, no way you were going to have it running on their POWER HW.

The Itanium managed to stick around until Windows Server 2008 R2. After this one, it's gone, and the only big-name OSes you will be able to get for an Itanic will be Linux, OpenVMS, NetBSD, and HP-UX. I'm sure there still will be ports of various other OSes, but it'll be pretty much dead outside of HP.

Microsoft is the kind of company that can afford to have multiple "Project Marklar" operations running. I'm sure that they have Windows running on ARM, MIPS (the Chinese variant), IBM POWER, and several other architectures (I'm guessing SPARC64).